Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Halloween weekend is upon is, and that can only mean one thing: it is time for unrelenting spookiness. No matter where you go, you can’t escape it. Bats will shriek, pumpkins will leer, and the sky will basically be made of lightning. Also, everyone you know will try to kill you. By giving you too much candy, which will ultimately result in diabetes if you give in to peer pressure and partake of hedonistic holiday sugar consumption. So naturally, as a public service (of sorts), RPS must do its part. Thus, I have elected to play three of the scariest games of all time in rapid succession, testing the limits of my psyche and intestinal fortitude for your amusement. What lies ahead? Push on the implausibly creaky door and go below for a video of gaming’s darkest, dankest, murderer-iest basements.>

This is too much, even for Halloween. Proof that the universe hates me, and that entropy affects video games, is the announcement of The 7th Guest 3. I thought the evil of the two previous dreadful games had been safely locked in the 90s, but keep your pets inside, they’ve escaped. You think you remember liking them? You’re forgetting what an idiot you were when you were 20 years younger. These half-arsed petrol station puzzle book puzzles, draped in the dullest FMV since man first drew on cave walls, were a novelty at the time. 7th Guest even predates the ghastly Myst, for dazzling our dumbass eyes with pre-rendered backgrounds and Z-list actors drooling careless dialogue projected over the top. You can fund it via Kickstarter!

Along with Watch_Dogs and The Crew, now South Park: The Stick Of Truth has fallen into next year. The game already slipped and slid when it was THQ’s property, and it doesn’t seem to be getting a grip on the town’s famously snowy streets under its new rulership. Having previously been given the 10th December for console (although PC was conspicuously never announced, and naturally Ubisoft ignored all our enquiries as to why), it’s now three months further on, on the 7th March 2014. Ubi are hoping a genuinely good video will make us calm. It’s less likely to work on their shareholders, who are already throwing their stakes out of the window and running screaming into the hills.

THIS IS TODAY’S MOST TERRIFYING POST. A bundle curated by Daniel Domscheit-Berg of Wikileaks containing Harlan Ellison’s point and petrify adventure I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream along with documentaries, graphic novels and hip-hop tracks about the surveillance state? There’s surely something here to give you the willies, whether you’re frightened of the leakers, the leaks, the misinformed masses, the data sniffing sneak thieves, or the apathetic attitude that left all of the windows open and doors unlocked in this Age of Information.

Humanity seems more prone than ever to heart-pulverizing squabbles and disgusting, knock-down-drag-out wars these days, but at least we can all agree on one thing: we really, really want Starbound to come out already. The wait for the Terraria-alike to end all Terraria-alikes has become unbearable, so you should be happy to hear that you won’t have to bear it for much longer. Starbound’s first beta is officially on the horizon, with developer Chucklefish gleefully chucking around words like “soon” and “really not very far off now.” More importantly, they’ve outlined how exactly the beta’s various phases are going to play out. If you’re hoping to join, this is probably required reading.

If you place some kind of weird one-trailer-per-day restriction on yourself and are currently fretting about finding Mr or Ms Right: The Extremely Brief Videogame Preview, then look no further. Clockwork Empires, the latest ball of bits and bytes from Dungeons of Dredmor developer Gaslamp Games, just got its first trailer, and it’s sending RPS’ hyper-sensitive Delight-O-Meter into a tizzy. The game is a 19th century steampunk colony builder, but the trailer reveals that it’s so very much more than the staid stew of trite aesthetic cliches that description seems to imply. Somehow, it manages to prompt tearfloods of both uproarious laughter and bitter sadness within the span of, like, a minute. Also, there are giant squid monsters. Enough of my blathering. Watch.

Here’s some very good news: CD Projekt Red are keeping their promise, and The Witcher 3 is to feature no DRM whatsoever. It’s odd, because they feel like the sort of company that never would in the first place – what with their connections to GOG and all. But CDP have stuck their fingers in the icky pot of DRM in the past. And of course they were embroiled in the epically dick move of threatening alleged pirates with bullying lawsuits. It seems that this ill behaviour is behind them now, and they’re making efforts to reassure people that there’s to be not a drip of DRM in The Witcher 3. Hoorah!

Lego Marvel Super Heroes is out in the States, but has then horribly drowned in the oceans, seemingly not released in Europe until the 15th November. Quite why Warner would go to such lengths to screw up the release of such an excellent game we’re not sure. We’ve asked. I’ve been playing it non-stop for days, and despite being told I’m only 20% of the way through, feel ready to tell you wot I think:>